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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Author Topic: Why is my fleet full of cowards?  (Read 20752 times)

TaLaR

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Re: Why is my fleet full of cowards?
« Reply #30 on: May 19, 2017, 01:20:35 PM »

@Alex can you make ships 2 sizes smaller avoid fight with bigger fish and rather assist other ships, focusing on survival mostly? I've stopped using frigates altogether (even Tempests) after they've been dying repeatedly due to I don't even know what, it angered me greatly. Then again, perhaps frigates aren't supposed to fight in capital fights at all and I realised this too late.

Under player control Tempest can avoid most things till CR runs out fairly easily (and score some kills in process, unless too pestered by phase/fighters/Hyperion), which means that there is nothing about Tempest itself making it impossible.
Just AI being not careful enough.

Do you use steady/aggressive/reckless officers on these frigates? From what I understand, these will attack anything, even Paragon 1 vs 1 unless Avoid order is used.
Cautious frigates on the other hand refuse to fight pretty much anything, including much weaker frigates.
No really good option either way, but I prefer cautious ones for point capping and distraction.
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SCC

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Re: Why is my fleet full of cowards?
« Reply #31 on: May 19, 2017, 01:46:23 PM »

I don't use officers at all at frigates because... They die too easily. And also I've got better things to put them on.
I know that Tempest is good (I'd say that any phase frigate, Brawler, Tempest and Hyperion are all capable of punching above their weight (though Brawler not for long)), it's just the AI being stupid and/or not careful. Not cowardly enough.
And also there's an issue of literally no point in capping any points since I have >20% EW advantage most of the time.+

Alex

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Re: Why is my fleet full of cowards?
« Reply #32 on: May 19, 2017, 01:53:58 PM »

That's tricky, because oftentimes you want frigates to attack larger targets in groups. When that's a possibility, they will indeed avoid engaging until they can group up. Disallowing that would be bad, especially from the perspective of the player facing a bunch of frigates. It's just a solution that creates more problems than it solves - I've looked at the very thing, and it's just not that simple, unfortunately. All sorts of edge cases to worry about - different types of enemy ships, etc. E.G. a Paragon and an Onslaught are very different in what the "right" approach is, but telling them apart on the fly - and drawing the line in the right place along the spectrum of all in-between ship variations - is non-trivial.
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Megas

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Re: Why is my fleet full of cowards?
« Reply #33 on: May 19, 2017, 03:27:41 PM »

Sufficiently large frigate swarm is evil.  They can avoid any large target, then swarm it to death.  Of course, that helps AI more since you probably do not want to devote all thirty slots to it, but the AI does not care (it does not need to recover ships, or you play simulator and deploy all enemies)

By endgame, my main battle fleet is mostly cruisers, with a capital or two, and maybe one or two destroyer-sized carriers.  Frigates are still useful for the occasional fearless Remnant who will always fight or for the auto-resolve to pick off survivors when you do not want to drain more CR from your main battle fleet.

@ Alex:  If grouping up/swarming is disallowed, I think Paragon (with HVDs and quad Tachyon Lances) might be able to solo simulator.  Frigate swarm is the only thing stopping Paragon.  (Bigger ships that try to swarm Paragon get kited and picked off first.)  Similarly, swarming was the only thing that saved four out of six fleets of Remnants from getting slaughtered at once by a solo Paragon.
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Kwbr

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Re: Why is my fleet full of cowards?
« Reply #34 on: May 19, 2017, 05:40:50 PM »

I've always found that the AI regards most orders as a vague suggestion more than anything considerably useful, the few exceptions being escort and retreat orders. I haven't noticed officer aggression affecting a whole lot either other than cautious/timid. I'm probably just doing something wrong though :P
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xenoargh

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Re: Why is my fleet full of cowards?
« Reply #35 on: May 19, 2017, 06:21:44 PM »

I don't have any problems with the new AI, the Wolf's balance is fine (although new players are comparing it to the alternative, which is another story entirely, balance-wise) and I think that a lot of the problems people are reporting are related to:

1.  Not understanding that the AI's "cowardly" behavior is directly related to how it's armed.  For example, if I want a "cowardly" Wolf, I give it nothing but Tac Lasers and a Steady officer, boom, it's a "coward".  If I want the very same Wolf to act aggressively with the very same Officer, I give it a Pulse Laser and PD Lasers; now it'll close.

2.  Not understanding that, with the balance changes to Officers, fleets simply can't face-roll quite as well as they did in 0.72 (although they get very close by the end, if armed correctly).  Moreover, the biggest change to the balance changes to Officers is that the Player's power is considerably less; I'd honestly recommend fixing that, so that the player is buffed more than Officers and can remain heroic... but that's just me.
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SCC

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Re: Why is my fleet full of cowards?
« Reply #36 on: May 19, 2017, 11:29:10 PM »

So I guess I'll simply avoid using non-phase frigates. I don't have enough command points to assign all frigates as escorts for bigger ships.

Aereto

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Re: Why is my fleet full of cowards?
« Reply #37 on: June 16, 2017, 11:34:49 PM »

I don't seem to have this problem... I find my ships happily diving in out numbered.  Just hire aggressive officers, steady officers will sit back at our just a bit beyond max range like they are poking at an alligator or something.

Steady works well for things like sunders or hammerhead type ships with good offense and bad defense. Frigates use cautious or steady so they can keep destroyers or even cruisers busy.

At the moment AI and officer aggressiveness works perfectly for me.
And of course, aggressive may fare better with cruisers and above, but reckless is probably what I should be looking for when I want an Onslaught to charge straight into an enemy fleet are rarely raise shields to maintain flux rates, so long as the opponent is not high tech or have monitors to entrap them. Their lack of maneuverability is their core weakness as a result of being tanky.

I would prefer flying in an afflictor while the rest of the officers fly in high armor ships to perform ambush flanking.
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Botaragno

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Re: Why is my fleet full of cowards?
« Reply #38 on: June 18, 2017, 06:28:11 AM »

The most obvious case of this I have seen is when one ship at high flux is being chased back by a ship with low flux.

The high flux ship will back up as much as it can, but the high flux ship does not make the decisive push and get into full weapons range. I have seen everything from Frigates to Cruisers do this timid dance about not finishing off an enemy when they're vulnerable, just hover outside of weapons range
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Tacheyon

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Re: Why is my fleet full of cowards?
« Reply #39 on: June 18, 2017, 01:58:47 PM »

All I know about this is that I have seen Steady and Aggressive ships with little to no flux be fearful of ships with high flux and less that 5% hull of the same size category. All it would take is the ship to move forward and fire a few times to defeat them and they simply refuse even with the new eliminate command, which is frankly a danger to use if there are other ships in the area.

Is there a reason it defaults to that now and not Engage?
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Alex_P

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Re: Friend, would you like to know which of your officers were cowards?
« Reply #40 on: June 18, 2017, 06:36:52 PM »

Hey Alex, I just want to let you know that not EVERYBODY dislikes the new AI.  I haven't had time to sit down and really write a bunch of feedback, but I love the "cowardly" AI.  I have not had ONE SINGLE TIME in my latest campaign where I felt the AI suicided my ships.  They (correctly in my opinion) act like I'm the leader who's supposed to be deciding where and when the lines of battle meet.  I have no compunction whatsoever about letting the AI fly my only Tempest or Hyperion because they simply WILL NOT suicide it.  Maybe they won't kill as many enemies per minute as I would, but I don't really care about that.  My fleet has a limited number of ships, the enemies are not limited.  The primary job of my officers is not to "match my DPS against enemy fleet", it is "fly my ships without getting them killed".  Even a 5% chance that putting whichever precious irreplaceable ship into combat means it will get killed because an AI captain flew my Tempest up a Dominator's exhaust port is unacceptable, and I'm willing to accept my AI captains being cowards 80% of the time to avoid that 5%.  I'd rather the fight take an extra five minutes because I have to do most of the killing myself than reload the game and replay the battle because my Cautious Condor thought it could provide supporting fire from in between two enemy Enforcers.  As far as I'm concerned, the AI on StarSector is done, complete, ready for 1.0.  They play like people who give a damn if they live or die, not like disposable NPCs in a video game.

I know I'm in the minority here, so for the 90% or more of the community who disagrees with me, let me point out another strategy I haven't seen brought up.  Full Assault, Eliminate, and Engage are all well and good, but I hardly use them.  What I use to get my AIs to actually fight is "Escort".  Telling a Heron or Dominator (or everybody in my fleet) to Escort my Medusa means that they will try to fight whatever I'm fighting.  Or tell a couple of Cautious officers to escort an Aggressive officer and they will try to keep distance, but still engage whoever's battling the leader.
I'll echo 95% of this sentiment.

I feel like the AI is aggressive enough to score kills but also very, very good at staying safe. In 0.7.x, I used to be really scared of deploying other capitals because I'd worry they'd get surrounded by various rubbish. In 0.8.x, I can send in a cruiser or capital to do its own thing (often I have them Assault/Defend a resource thingy), and it'll sit there methodically racking up kills against weaker ships and less well-developed officers. It just feels really, really solid.

I think maybe my one complaint is that a carrier automatically sends a bunch of its escorts to defend me, and I'd rather retask them to more aggressive work. "Fighter strike" seems to do the job but I wonder if there's a way to just say "don't bother defending me."
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TaLaR

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Re: Friend, would you like to know which of your officers were cowards?
« Reply #41 on: June 18, 2017, 08:57:09 PM »

I think maybe my one complaint is that a carrier automatically sends a bunch of its escorts to defend me, and I'd rather retask them to more aggressive work. "Fighter strike" seems to do the job but I wonder if there's a way to just say "don't bother defending me."

AI will prioritize escorting with fighters-only Carriers, but as long as there is at least 1 bomber wing, it will attack. Best bomber for trigger role is probably Longbow - sabots are useful even in small amounts and launched from afar, which helps keeping them safe. They also will auto-fire while regrouping, unlike any other bomber.
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Botaragno

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Re: Why is my fleet full of cowards?
« Reply #42 on: June 24, 2017, 05:15:35 AM »

Nothing is more infuriating than ordering ONE ship to go eliminate ONE other ship I'm getting buttblasted by, and the ship just dallying outside of range and not getting stuck in.

This is on Aggressive captains too.

Also the supremely limited Command Points system forbids any sort of tactical flexibility, Can't I just get on the ship mic and yell at the Sunderer to get away from that Ship already it's an asteroid touch away from blowing up. You make your defend orders at the start to maintain fleet cohesion then just grind your teeth when it inevitably falls apart and you can't do arse to rectify it
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Darloth

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Re: Why is my fleet full of cowards?
« Reply #43 on: June 26, 2017, 01:47:38 PM »

I had an Aggressive officer decide to park his destroyer right in front of an enemy battleship the other day.

He survived.  The destroyer, not so much.

We won the fight, but I still think maybe tanking all its frontal guns might not have been the optimal choice :)

(No orders were given, this just happened organically)
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Igncom1

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Re: Why is my fleet full of cowards?
« Reply #44 on: June 26, 2017, 02:34:33 PM »

I've had great success with escort orders and ordering my ships to assault objectives.

Keeps them together and protected for the most part while the carriers harass the enemy fleet into submission.

I have managed to keep high tech frigates alive while escorting astral carriers. With the escort and carrier defending each other rather successfully.

Cruisers are often strong enough to survive on their own, but never let them get surrounded, so destroyer escorts are great, other cruiser escorts even better.
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